A Vanishing Act for 'Lost,' As It Takes a 13-Week Break

By EDWARD WYATT

Published: November 8, 2006

CORRECTION APPENDED

After little more than a month of thrills and twists that have some fans feeling that the show is at its best ever, ''Lost'' is disappearing into the wilderness.

After tonight's episode, only the sixth of the still-young fall television season, ABC will take ''Lost'' off the air for 13 weeks. The show will return on Feb. 7 for a run of 16 or 17 new episodes that will carry viewers into late May.

But the midyear split season is a scheduling gambit that could have enormous consequences not only for ABC, but also for the entire genre of serialized television drama, testing whether audiences are loyal enough to expensive, complex shows to weather long midseason interruptions.

Lengthy delays between seasons is a characteristic common to HBO and other premium channels, which have put popular series like ''The Sopranos'' on extended breaks to accommodate the plotting, script writing, filming and production schedules required to produce such cinematic shows.

But it is highly unusual for broadcast television, which still mostly adheres to a September-to-May season, to remove a show entirely from the schedule for three months in midyear.

''We would love to have 35 weeks of uninterrupted episodes,'' said Jeffrey D. Bader, an executive vice president at ABC Entertainment who is responsible for planning and scheduling the network's prime-time programming. ''But the 'Lost' air schedule is dependent on the production schedule. And like all one-hour dramas, only a certain number of episodes can be delivered for the fall.''

This season's split schedule is partly the result of backlash from fans who complained loudly last season about the frequent interspersing of new episodes with repeats. At its annual meeting with advertisers in New York last spring, Stephen McPherson, the president of ABC Entertainment, promised to address those complaints.

Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, executive producers of ''Lost,'' said they believed this season's scheduling would help fans follow the show better.

''Last season we would try to build a narrative arc over three or four weeks, and then it would just die with three or four repeats,'' Mr. Cuse said. ''We didn't want to be in a situation this year where the audience would tune in and be confused whether an original episode was on or not.''

But the schedule could still cause confusion and dismay among ''Lost'' fans who do not spend most of their waking hours scouring recorded episodes and online fan sites for clues about the mysteries of the island where the show is set. If they tune in next Wednesday night at the usual time, they will be greeted with the first episode of ''Day Break,'' a new drama starring Taye Diggs, that has its own supernatural mysteries.

Part of the problem is that, as television dramas have become more like movies, the time required to produce a single episode has lengthened. Whereas dramas like ''Marcus Welby, M.D.'' might have required five days to shoot enough scenes to fill an hour of broadcast television, shows like ''Lost'' and the Fox hit ''24'' require eight days of filming, not including weekends.

Barry Jossen, the executive vice president for production at Touchstone Television, the studio that produces ''Lost,'' explained that, compared with shows like ''Marcus Welby,'' each episode of newer dramas has more scenes, more characters in each scene and more camera angles on each character.

Add in the time required to produce special effects, like the black-cloud monster that last week attacked the ''Lost'' character Mr. Eko, and the hours spent editing together all those scenes and camera angles, and it can take two weeks or more to create a one-hour show.

One solution might seem to be to start production earlier. But that is difficult with serialized shows, which have a season-long story line, meaning the whole season must be plotted in advance. Therefore more time must be spent writing and plotting in the summer, before actors begin stepping in front of the cameras.

Fox solves the problem by not putting ''24'' on the air until January, then running the show for 24 weeks straight, without interruption or repeat.

Mr. Bader said that ABC considered that, but other factors worked against it.

''We knew this would be a risky fall for us,'' he said. ''Monday Night Football'' moved from ABC to ESPN this year, leaving a hole in the network's prime-time schedule. The network also moved ''Grey's Anatomy'' from Sunday nights to Thursday and, uncertain what the results of that move would be, decided that it could not afford to keep another signature franchise, ''Lost,'' off the fall schedule, he said.

Creating an extended, continuous season would require a different approach. ''We could say, O.K., 'Lost' will be on for 30 weeks without interruption,'' Mr. Bader said. ''But to produce that many shows, we wouldn't be able to do a season next year,'' and viewers would have to wait until the 2008-9 season for the next installments.

Instead, ABC hopes to keep ''Lost'' fans enticed over the next three months with what it is calling '' 'Lost' Nuggets'': 30-second promotional clips of scenes from episodes not yet broadcast that will hint at what will become of the island castaways when the show returns.

The ''Nuggets'' will be shown each week during ''Day Break,'' although ABC is not saying at what time, meaning ''Lost'' fans will have to watch the new show or fast-forward through their digitally recorded files to unearth the clues.

Correction: November 17, 2006, Friday
An article in The Arts on Nov. 8 about a decision by ABC to take ''Lost'' off the air for 13 weeks referred incorrectly to the way Fox has shown ''24,'' another serial with a season-long story line. While it has indeed shown it without interruption or repeats, it has sometimes shown two episodes in one night. It has not run the show for 24 consecutive weeks.